That was followed by Seattle online real estate brokerage Redfin, which ranked 38th with an estimated value of $550 million (just below Trulia’s current public valuation), and Bellevue enterprise software company Apptio, which ranked 61st with an estimated value of $350 million. T. Rowe Price led a $50 million round in Apptio in March, one of the biggest venture capital deals in the region in the past five years.

No other Seattle area companies made the list, and from what I could tell no Portland companies (Survey Monkey is listed as based in Foster City, California) cracked the top 100. A few potential absences from the Pacific Northwest: INRIX, Tableau, DocuSign and Donuts. (The Wall Street Journal just named DocuSign, Donuts and Cheezburger to its list of the top 50 startups).

The top five companies on Business Insider’s list — Alibaba, Bloomberg, Twitter, 360Buy and Palantir — all had estimated valuations above $3 billion.

Of course, ranking private companies on valuations is more art than science, since most of the values aren’t readily available. (One of the reasons the companies are called private). Business Insider said they ranked the companies on a number of factors, including “revenue, users, market opportunities, growth rates, and the perception of investors and tech gurus.” In many cases, the ranking is based on public comparables, many companies which have lost value in the public markets.

John Cook is GeekWire's co-founder and editor, a veteran reporter and the longest-serving journalist on the Pacific Northwest tech startup beat. Follow him @johnhcook and email john@geekwire.com.

Tell me why the fastest growing BI company, who was justed voted the Best Place to work in Seattle, who is profitable, the darling of their industry, and has a ton of open positions because they are growing so quickly, was not on the list. An oversight? A lack of interest in VC funding because they are making their own money, not living off someone else’s?